All Blacks hooker Dane Coles ruled out of Wallaby Test

New Zealand hooker Dane Coles has been ruled out of Saturday’s Test against Australia, with coach Steve Hansen confirming he is again suffering a possible head injury.

Soon after arriving in Sydney on Sunday afternoon, the All Blacks tweeted that Coles would not be considered for the Test, the first in the Rugby Championship.

Hansen said Coles left the field “as a precaution” during last Friday’s game against Counties Manukau and Taranaki in New Zealand, and would be assessed by the All Blacks medical staff while in Sydney this week.

Coles, with 49 Tests under his belt, is New Zealand’s first-choice hooker. But he missed most of the Super Rugby season and the three Tests against the British and Irish Lions because of concussion symptoms following a head knock in March.

His Wellington Hurricanes team-mate Ricky Riccitelli has been summoned to Sydney as a replacement.

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Bad boy Blues reveal toxic culture of NSW State of Origin team

Culture is the buzz word in Australian sport at the moment. This team wins because they have a good culture. This team loses because they have a problem with culture. And one team who clearly has an ongoing culture problem is the NSW Blues.

After yet another unsuccessful State of Origin campaign, this one lost from an almost unloseable position, the magnifying glass has once more been brought out to try and discover why one horse has lost an apparently even two-horse race 11 out of the last 12 races. It’s almost enough to call in the stewards.

Stories have begun emerging about bad behaviour in the Blues camp in the lead up to Origin 2 and 3, all supposedly hinting at a rotten culture in the NSW camp.

So concerned was the NSWRL about these rumours that they took the extraordinary step of issuing a statement refuting the claims. The lady doth protest too much we think.

Firstly, perennial bad boys Josh Dugan and Blake Ferguson were allegedly inebriated before Game 3, spending most of the Friday before the match at a local watering hole, the Lennox Point Hotel, near where the Blues were in camp.

Allegedly, the duo were “acting like clowns” but the NSWRL statement strongly refutes this saying the players “were not affected” and they trained “strongly” the next morning.

The statement makes no comment though about Dugan and Ferguson, who have a history of bad behaviour, spending up to eight hours in that type of activity five days out from one of the most important games of their career. It is hardly great preparation for an elite athlete – a fact the NSWRL neglects to mention.

For the record Ferguson had a quiet match in Game 3 while Dugan was among NSW’s best and almost hauled the Blues back into the match with a stunning piece of skill to score early in the second half.

Andrew Fifita and Josh Dugan arrive for a New South Wales Blues Origin training session.

The second allegation is extraordinary. Allegedly (again) NSW prop Andrew Fifita was told by Blues coach Laurie Daley that he would not be starting in Game 3 with David Klemmer being preferred and Fifita coming off the bench.

Supposedly Fifita reacted so badly to this news that Daley was forced to back down and allowed the big Sharks prop to start. The NSWRL denies this outright.
“It is entirely false to suggest that on the morning of the game (or at any other time during the camp) Laurie had a conversation with Andrew in which he advised Andrew that he was starting on the bench” reads the statement.

Once more the statement is not dealing with the core issue – a player forcing the coach to change his selection decision.

The third allegation is that a car, hired by a journalist to cover the NSW camp, was vandalised. The inference was made that the vandalising was carried out by Blue players. Again the NSWRL refutes this and calls on “anyone in possession of information which supports an allegation of criminal conduct against one or more of our players” should “immediately report the information to the NSW Police”.

No matter how many of the allegations are proven to be true or false, the fact that the NSWRL has been forced to issue the statement shows that there are deep issues within the Blues camp and the culture is anything but healthy.

The same old story: Queensland win, NSW lose

The situation is so toxic that Blues legend Peter Sterling is thinking of quitting his advisory role with the squad, a position he only took up this year.

Responding to the deluge of criticism, Sterling said: “It has a way of maybe beating a little bit of passion out of you unfortunately.

“When you lose you put yourself in that situation and that’s the nature of the beast. Whether I want to be a part of that beast again I’m not quite sure.

“If you lose you open yourself up to the slings and the arrows. I’ve just been disappointed with some of the slings and some of the arrows.”

Wallabies coach Cheika on transforming the way his side play and restoring pride in the green and gold jersey

On a mission: Cheika is determined to take the Wallabies back to the top of the world.

Wallabies coach Michael Cheika talks a good game.

And when he began his reign in October 2014, after the shocking resignation of Ewen McKenzie, the results matched the rhetoric.

From his appointment to the end of the Rugby World Cup in 2015, the Wallabies won 11 out of 16 matches (69%) including defeating the All Blacks for the first time since 2011 and reaching the 2015 RWC Final.

But since then Cheika’s team has struggled. In their past 18 matches they have won just eight (44%), including five losses in a row last year and losing a home Test series against England (0-3) for the first time in history.

For Cheika, this was expected. The former Leinster, Stade Francais and NSW title-winning coach is determined to transform the way the Wallabies play the game and in the interim it’s inevitable that results will suffer.

“Sometimes you think you have got to go that way (be defensive),” says Cheika, “that those (attacking) things that work at a level down are not going to work at Test level.

Traditionally people would say ‘no, they won’t’ but I’ve never been a traditionalist.”

The 50-year-old is even more focused this year and regrets backing away from his transformation plan last season.

“I actually think last year we got talked around a little bit, into ‘You’ve got to play Test football doing one, two and three. That’s the way it’s always been played’,” he admits.

“I didn’t push as hard myself to say, ‘no, this is how we want to play, this is how the supporters want us to play. We are going to play like that, let the cards fall where they do’.

“Maybe we were thinking too much about the outcomes than how and just readjusting that balance a little bit.”

Michael Cheika chats with Wallabies full-back Israel Folau.

Cheika won the Super Rugby crown in 2014 with the Waratahs, the first time in 19 attempts that the under-performing NSW team managed that feat, and he did so playing a high-octane, highly entertaining style of rugby that had the city buzzing and the stands full.

This is the style that Cheika wants the NSW-laden Wallabies to emulate but it has been a painful transition. The coach however can not take all the blame with Australian rugby currently experiencing a talent drain.

Their five Super Rugby teams’ performances have been abysmal, winning just 20 of their 56 matches played in the tournament this year. The results are so bad that one team is due to be culled next season.

But Cheika is undeterred, even after the Wallabies slumped to a surprise 24-19 loss to an under-strength Scotland in the June series. They even required two late tries to overcome an Italy side who lost to Fiji the previous week.

Wallaby fans are unsurprisingly worried.

When Jack Quigley, a rugby coach and fan, posted a drunken rant on Facebook and the post received over 53,000 likes, Cheika gave him a call to discuss it.

“I think that’s important that you talk to the fans,” explained Cheika.

“I just spoke to him about some of the things that we’re feeling and what we want to do and what’s going on in the background because we’re feeling the same thing as the fans, too.”

The Wallabies continue to go through a transitional period under Cheika.

But clearly Australian rugby is not at the level it should be. How do you fix that?

“Well you identify exactly what the reason is from our understanding and the analysis we’ve done and we look to address it. Simple.

“There’s been a lot of conversation around talent, and our results are not because of our talent situation – I’m telling you now.

“We’ve got to identify what it is – we’ve got a lot of good players – and we feel we’re down the road on doing that.

“We’re already talking to players about what we think are the key things that they need to be (addressing), the things that are making a (bad) habit for themselves. So they can understand that now and the predicament they’re in.

“Things can change at that point very quickly. Once you know what the issue is stopping you from playing your best footy and also having a plan on how to address it.”

He is adamant that the problem is not from a lack of skills compared to the other heavyweights of the global game.

“Last year we struggled a bit, this year we’ve struggled much more – but I don’t think all of a sudden we’ve forgotten how to do things,” he insists.

“I know for a fact that players who have been making skill errors, those same players I’ve seen do those skills under immense pressure. So they forget how to do it?”

Cheika is driven, passionate and full of ideas and theories. Sometimes his mind works so fast his words struggle to keep up.

He believes the problems with his team are as much mental as they are physical.

“Some of these things are in the mindset of players, making them fearful, making errors, things like that, which can start to become a circle which can get back to you – and therefore affecting how you execute skills and how you play rugby.

“That’s somewhere we’ve got to look at too.

Clearing our mindset. Cause right now we’re being told we’re really poor, all the time, it’s coming from all angles.

“You read that, you think that, you talk that – and you start to believe it.

“Making sure the players don’t believe it is going to be just as important as getting them ready tactically and technically.”

To Cheika, Australian rugby is built solely on the players.

“We’ve got a situation in Australia where we have little or no assets,” he says. “We don’t own our bigger competitions. We don’t own our stadia that we play in.

“So our biggest asset is our players. The sooner we get into a situation where we’re working together – to make sure that our biggest asset is in the best possible position to maximise its performance – then we’ll be considered smart operators.”